


On Point

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [88]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 21:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19118068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: Opening night in Edmonton, and Jared’s in the line-up.It’s fucking surreal.





	On Point

Opening night in Edmonton, and Jared’s in the line-up.

It’s fucking surreal.

There’s something kind of electric about the air in Rogers Place tonight. Maybe Jared’s just imagining it, or maybe he’s biased because it’s his first official NHL game, but he feels it humming through him regardless. He’s lucky he made it — when he realised they were fundamentally putting him on a tryout, he was thinking nine straight games before he was in or out, but in practice, they’ve got some extra on the wing right now, and he’s probably going to sit out as many as he plays until they decide whether they want to send him down or keep him. No pressure or anything.

But the first game of the season, he’s in, and he’s frankly petrified. Jared’s been nervous before games before, all different kinds of nervous — ‘it’s do or die time’ nervous, and ‘we need these points’ nervous, and ‘holy shit I’m a Hitman and pretty much my entire family is in the crowd’ nervous. He was nervous before his first game as an Oiler, too, except this is it but like, _official_ , and honestly, Jared is internally freaking out, and warm-ups, rather than settling that feeling, just amp it up. 

There are people already there, standing by the glass. A lot of them, who came early to watch them do this, and Jared is suddenly terrified he’s going to trip over his own feet. His parents and Erin are somewhere in the crowd, but they’re too high up for him to scout them out, and Jared stops looking for them after a minute, because eyeballing the stands is definitely going to up his chances of stumbling.

He gets off the ice without falling, but there’s still sixty minutes for that. Maybe during his first shift he’ll slip and fall and fuck up his knee and there’s his career over, just like that.

Jared takes deep breaths. Counts them out. Looks over at Julius, who isn’t bouncing his knee this time, and objectively that’s good, but Jared kind of wishes there was some anxious solidarity going on right now.

“Do you feel sick?” Jared asks. 

“No,” Julius says, then, alarmed, “Are you sick? Flu?” He looks like he’s about to put twenty feet between them if the answer’s yes.

“No, just like, nervous I guess,” Jared says. “You nervous?”

“Oh,” Julius says, back to bored sounding. “No.”

Jared scowls at him.

“No shame in throwing up,” Rogers says, clearly eavesdropping. “You wouldn’t be the first or last guy to do it before his first game. It’s practically a tradition.”

“I’m not going to throw up,” Jared mutters.

Honestly, it’s closer than he’d like — Jared barely hears a word Mulligan says, or Jacobi, when he follows up, and he notices through everyone’s fist bumps and ass slaps and whatever traditions that have been around way longer than him, that his hands are shaking so obviously he can see it even with his gloves on. Apparently Morris sees it too, because he claps him on the back, taps his helmet.

“One shift,” Morris says. “Take a hit, hit someone, touch the puck. You’ll be fine.”

“Sure,” Jared says, and he knows from experience that’s true, settles the nerves, gets his head in the game, but he doesn’t quite believe him anyway.

Morris isn’t wrong. Jared touches the puck, takes a hit, loses the puck, and then he’s chasing, the guy and the game, everything in his head clicking right into place. It’s hockey. Stakes are higher, guys are bigger on average, probably meaner, but it’s hockey, and Jared knows how to play hockey.

It takes Julius thirty two minutes to get on the board this time. It may not be a goal, but it’s a point, and Brouwer’s in the net fishing the puck out for him while accidentally on purpose banging into the Canucks goalie. Julius isn’t even smiling when he skates by the bench for the fly-by fistbumps. His poker face is insane. You’d think this was his thousandth point and not his first. Like, yeah, 4-1 isn’t a score anyone’s happy about, but _first NHL point_.

Jared doesn’t notch any points, but then, neither does anyone else — they’re on the back foot most of the time, and Jared thinks he does well defensively. He’s on for a goal against, but that was a scrambled, ugly match up against the Canucks’ first line, and he had his guy covered. 

They lose — of course they lose, they’re the Oilers, and they’re playing the fucking Canucks — but the guys all want to go out anyway, and Jared’s protest that he needs to see his family only gets Jacobi squinting at him and saying, “You better be there by the second round.”, so he guesses he’s on a tight schedule.

Erin’s got her Oilers jersey on, but Jared’s relieved to see his dad and mom both in normal clothes. It might have broken his brain to see his dad, lifelong Flames fan, dressed like the enemy. Like, never mind Jared, lifelong Flames fan, _playing_ for the enemy. It’s different.

Jared immediately gets folded into a group hug. “You were so good,” his mom says when she pulls back.

“I did okay,” Jared says.

“You did all the right things,” his dad says, and Jared nods. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t anything that helped them win, but he knows he was solid, and he didn’t help them _lose_ either. Plus he didn’t fall down. That’s important.

Jared planned to go out to dinner with them, maybe go back to their hotel for a bit, but he has a feeling Jacobi’s going to be paying attention to whether he shows up, and even though his mom looks disappointed when he tells her he’s got his captain’s orders, his dad just says, “Team first, if you want to be sticking around.”

Bryce is in Cali, just got off the ice, and on the ride over to the bar, Jared looks up the box score, not surprised at all to find that Bryce already notched his first goal of the season, the Flames their first win, sends a congrats that Bryce responds to with a string of sad emojis, presumably for the Oilers loss, and a promise to watch the game as soon as he’s back at his hotel.

 _Dork_ , Jared sends with a grin, and Bryce responds with even more sad emojis.

*

The bar’s crazy busy when they get there, all the Oilers and either some really quickly friendly hook-ups to be or girlfriends, along with what looks like a ton of fans. It takes Jared forever to get a beer, which is fine, since he isn’t sticking around for more than one anyway, unless Jacobi starts making more rules or whatever, finds Julius in a dark corner. He looks like he was trying to hide — Jared honestly checked most of the place before he found him — but he’s surrounded by people anyway.

“Do you know any of these people?” Jared asks, leaning over the table, and Julius shakes his head helplessly. Jared’s wondering if he’s just been mutely suffering in the corner since he got there, too polite to tell people to fuck off.

“Yo, can I take that seat?” Jared asks the guy sitting beside him. He’s wearing a Brouwer jersey, and he’s obviously not Brouwer, so Jared’s going with fan, and he has a pretty good idea of what kind of guy he is considering his jersey choice. You drop that kind of money on an enforcer’s jersey, it says something about you.

“Who’re you?” the guy asks, and Jared’s hunch is confirmed by the straight up aggression in the question. 

“Uh,” Jared says. “Jared?”

“And?” the guy says, posture definitely aggressive too, like he’s gearing up for a fight. If Brouwer didn’t kind of terrify him, Jared would be so tempted to go ask him to come over and tell the dick in his jersey to fuck off.

“He’s my roommate,” Julius says. “On the team.”

“Shit, sorry,” the guy says hastily, clearly realising for the first time that Jared’s not like, a rando. “Didn’t — welcome to the Oilers?”

“Thanks,” Jared says dryly, and sits in the newly vacated seat. The two people across from them are on their phones, don’t actually look like fans, maybe family or friends who grabbed like, the only available seats in the bar. Jared is pretty sure they’re breaking the fire code with how many people are packed in this place.

“God I hope it isn’t like this after every game,” Jared says, low.

“Yes,” Julius says, and it’s amazing how fervent a single word can be.

“Wanna head out?” Jared asks.

Julius holds out his phone, where, under ‘Victor Jacobi’ it says ‘ur here until midnight cinderella’.

“Great,” Jared sighs. He can’t exactly leave without him; who knows who’d take his seat next? “That’s — less than an hour, at least?” 

Julius sighs back, and that is not the appropriate attitude from someone who scored their first NHL point, even though it sucks here.

“First point, man,” Jared says, nudging his arm.

“Not a goal,” Julius says, but Jared isn’t fooled: he sees that little grin Julius aims at the table.

They slink out at midnight on the nose, manage to avoid most of the team, most importantly Jacobi. Morris, clearly a little drunk, gives them both giant hugs but doesn’t like, force them to stick around or anything, and then they’re safely in a cab.

 _Think I almost got punched by an Oilers fan_ , Jared texts Bryce while Julius cranks the window down. It’s a little cold for it, but Jared doesn’t mind.

 _great minds_ , Bryce replies, clearly unrepentant. _tell me about it_

 _Next time we Skype_ , Jared says, because he’s beat, and when they get back to their hotel room it’s silent toothbrushing and straight to bed, like model rookies, while Jared’s sure the party’s still going on without them.

*

The party definitely went on without them, judging by practice, but thankfully after that guys seem to actually go into hockey mode when they fly out to Winnipeg.

They’ve assigned Julius as Jared’s road roomie too, and Jared’s relieved by that, because he already, like, knows the guy, knows how rooming with him is. Julius seems relieved by it too, and it’s kind of funny, packing for their first roadie and then unpacking in an almost identical hotel room, just like, in a different province. Jared’s obviously going to get a non-hotel room place if he sticks around, but in the meantime, everything feels a little like a non-stop roadie.

Julius is centring the line above Jared’s, and Jared would be a little worried about a dude his size on the checking line — hell, _Jared_ would be anxious on the checking line, and he’s probably got fifteen pounds on Julius — but having Brouwer on his wing seems to be a pretty effective deterrent. Man’s got a reputation that pretty clearly lays it out that if they’re going to go after Julius, they’re going to have their own blood on their hands sooner rather than later. Or, more accurately, their blood on Brouwer’s hands. 

In practice it’s working out pretty damn well for him: he’s playing bottom D, bottom six forwards, has Brouwer and Grant making sure he’s got space to manoeuvre, and in their first five games, he notches two goals and three assists. The so called checking line’s produced more than any other line but the first. Jared’s proud of him, like some stupid big brother, and only a little jealous. Medium jealous, max. Might be majorly jealous if he doesn’t notch a point of his own soon. He’s been watching in a suit almost as much as he’s been playing, and it has him edgy, because if he doesn’t prove himself soon it’ll all be over.

During team breakfast in Nashville, Fitzgerald pulls a chair over to their table with a jarring scrape that wakes Jared up more than the coffee.

“We’re keeping you, OJ,” Fitzgerald says, ruffling Julius’ hair, and Julius mutely sends Jared a longsuffering look Jared feels down to his bones. “Mike’s already got more points than he did all last season.”

“Go fuck yourself, Fitzgerald,” Brouwer says from two tables over, not even looking up from his food.

“OJ?” Julius asks when Fitzgerald wanders off to Brouwer’s table. 

“Probably another play on Orange Julius,” Jared guesses. “And like, stands for orange juice.”

Julius sighs, and Jared decides not to tell him about OJ Simpson. He’s suffering enough already.

*

They lose, the night Jared gets his first point, and it’s not that Jared doesn’t care, obviously Jared wants to win, but — 

He honestly can’t stop grinning on the ride back to the hotel, rubbing his thumb over the tape on his puck, the Matheson scribbled hastily by their equipment manager in black sharpie, then, in increasingly cramped letters, like he belatedly realised he was running out of space ‘1st career NHL point’. It wasn’t anything flashy, just a secondary assist, him back to the D for a howitzer from Rogers that got deflected by the screen. It doesn’t matter: it still feels fucking amazing.

Bryce played that night, got _three_ points, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the way he sounds on the phone when Jared calls him from the lobby, giddy, but like, not from his own game, but from Jared’s.

“Because clearly we need more pucks in our apartment,” Jared says.

“I’ll put it right beside my first puck,” Bryce says. 

“There’s no room,” Jared says. They’re all in a row. A massive, massive row, because Bryce is obnoxiously good at hockey.

“I’ll make room,” Bryce says. “Like, fix it, have a spot for all yours beside mine so they’ll match.”

Jared doubts there’ll be corollaries for all of them — he doesn’t see himself getting a ‘fiftieth point of the season’ puck any time soon, though if Julius keeps tearing shit up, _he_ will. Maybe Jared can like, steal it.

He doesn’t say that, though, because then Bryce will get all chiding at him, and he likes this giddy Bryce, the way giddy Bryce is building the giddiness Jared’s got running all through him. 

“Next time you’re home,” Bryce says. “There’ll be a spot for it.”

Jared likes the sound of that, all of that. 

“Maybe I’ll have another one by then,” he says.

“Yeah you will,” Bryce says confidently, and Jared grins at the floor. “I’ll start clearing space now.”

“Do that,” Jared says, and he’s not even a little surprised when his phone buzzes while he’s skimming TSN in bed with a picture showing Bryce’s handiwork, the blank space on the wall meant for his puck.

Jared runs his thumb over it one last time — it’s not _that_ weird, it’s sitting on the bedside table, not like, under his pillow — before he sends Bryce a thumbs up, smiling helplessly at his phone until it goes dim, then tells himself sternly to go to sleep, because he’s got more pucks to get.


End file.
